by Aaron

Lighten your load!

My backback I carry daily and on trips was extra heavy this morning. I was doing a bit of packing for an upcoming trip (trying to see what would fit, what wouldn’t) — and after filling my backpack with the necessities and hefting it onto my back, my wife turned to me and pointed out how heavy the backpack looked.

I emptied the various nooks and crannies to see what I was actually carrying. I’ll spare you a photograph of the pandemonium that is my backpack, but I will say that if your bag contains things like mine (did), it might be time to lighten the load:

  1. Network crossover adapter. I don’t know if I’ve ever used this.
  2. USB extension cable. Neat, but again, I cannot think of a time I’ve needed to extend a USB cable while on a trip. I should leave this in my den/office where it might actually come in handy!
  3. USB male-female inverter thingy. You’d think there had been a USB emergency at some point for me to carry this.
  4. Three mini-to-full sized USB cables. I only have 2 USB ports on my laptop. It’s rare that I need more than one thing plugged in at a time while traveling.
  5. Wireless mouse & wired mouse. I’ll stick to the wired mouse — it’s for travel anyway. I leave a wireless mouse at work.
  6. Over $4 in change. Yeah, just in case someone needs change or there’s a vending machine that won’t take bills or a credit card.
  7. Airport Express. When hotels didn’t have wireless, this was useful. Now, it’s just dead weight.
  8. A unopened box of sleeping pills. This was for a trip a year and a half ago. But I’ve been carrying them around just in case I’m too wide awake….
  9. Various ailments related to digestion… (I had a bad case of food poisoning at the last PDC which inspired me to always have these on hand).
  10. 2 USB memory sticks. One 8GB and the other 2GB.
  11. 6 cough drops. Hack, hack, hack.
  12. Bandages. Maybe I’ll get a nasty cut from an extra usb cable …
  13. Dental floss. (Just a small package — I can’t decide if this should stay or go).

What’s the silliest thing you carry around that you don’t need? I’m not a pack-rat at all … so I find it funny that I’ve been carrying around all of this unnecessary weight for so long!